


Hear My Voice This Time

by goldenheartprincess



Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: F/F, F/M, Rachel Platten, Songfic, Suicide, fight song, fight song rachel platten, heathers songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-17 00:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10583082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenheartprincess/pseuds/goldenheartprincess
Summary: A songfic based off of Rachel Platten's Fight Song. McNamara stays on her lifeboat, Dunnstock writes to her kindergarten boyfriend, and Sawyer is a dead girl walking.





	1. Yellow

**Author's Note:**

> “Because you’re important. You, Heather McNamara, are a princess and princesses deserve better than bathroom deaths and magazine statistics. You deserve a throne and diamonds.”

I blink back tears in front of my peers as they breathe in together. Duke is the first to breathe out. Her eyes are harsh and unforgiving, and I do not yet know if I need their forgiveness. “I lost my best friend.” I choke out, the only honest words I remember how to pronounce escaping my lips. “We lose friends all the time, but it’s really fucking different when she’s dead. When she decided to be dead.”

_ Like a small boat, on the ocean. _

“It feels like, sometimes, I’m in a boat, in a raging black ocean, low in the water. There’s no escape, and I’m just trapped on a lifeboat with the people I know.” I can’t even bring myself to lie and say it’s my friends or my lovers or my peers. They’re just the people I know. It hurts that none of them know me. 

_ Sending big waves, into motion. _

In an instant, water floods from my sweaty palms, distancing me from my friends. From the people I thought were my friends. They take in a breath, inhaling the water that I struggled to stay afloat in. “Aw, Heather’s going to cry!” The only girl left in my life jeers, rubbing the saltwater in my wounds as I bleed out on the cafeteria floor. 

“Why don’t you get in your lifeboat and sail away?”  
I have no other choice. They’re throwing me out of the boat. My feet carry me away, to the furthest bathroom. The walls blend together as I run in a frenzy, my ears filled with the sound of my own blood pumping and echos of Heather’s voice. She’s telling me to join her, and that’s all I want to do.

I was planning on reuniting with my best- my only- friend sooner rather than later.

My fingers tremble around a pill bottle from my purse, yellow tablets prescribed to my father. I always thought red would be the color to kill me. 

I take one last look into the mirror, at my pale reflection. I don’t have a note or anything. The words just wouldn’t come out right. It’s a message in a bottle at the bottom of the ocean. I only hope to be buried at sea. For once in my life, as I shake with dark circles under my eyes and wrinkles around my cheeks, I am not beautiful. It’s freeing.

With a deep breath, I pour the bottle of pills in my mouth, unsure how to swallow them all at once. But I will find a way to. I have to find a way.

_ Like how a single word, can make a heart open. _

“Stop!”

Pale blue hands shake me, spilling pills from my lips over the sink. They bounce and clatter around the tiled floor, and it’s louder than the cafeteria was. “Suicide is a private thing!” I whine, tears forming in my eyes as more bullets fall from my mouth. 

“Throwing your life away to become a statistic in the U. S. fucking A. Today is about the least private thing I can think of.” Veronica spins me around to face her kind, gentle features. We have matching under eye bags and creases along our cheeks. “If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?”

I can’t imagine staying on the bridge alone. “Probably.”

And I just start crying.

I don’t like crying in front of people, or crying at all, but the tears just won’t stop flooding the room like Alice in Wonderland. Maybe my boat will float now, above the ocean I’m forming. “Why couldn’t you just let me die?” I have no impact on the world. Nobody would miss me. People probably want me dead.

_ I might only have one match, _

“Because you’re important. You, Heather McNamara, are a princess and princesses deserve better than bathroom deaths and magazine statistics. You deserve a throne and diamonds.”

My heart beat out of my chest at the first kind words that I had ever heard from another girl. I keep my head up, as to not let my tiara fall. I am a princess. And I have a dragon to slay. I wobble to my feet. “I have something to do.” I tell Veronica, leaving behind the pills. I don’t need them anymore.

_ But I can make an explosion. _

Words flood my mind like I flooded the cafeteria and my tears flooded the bathroom. It’s murky and I can’t think, and there is so much I want to say. I push open the door to a million dull faces. “Heather.” I command her presence with simply my name, her name, our name. The only thing I will ever let connect us.

_ And all those things I didn’t say. _

_ Wrecking balls inside my brain. _

“You’re sad.” I tell her, the green demon in tube socks. “You tear me down to build you up, but a good throne cannot be built on bones. Your wine is made of blood and the only reason why I can never forgive you is because you love it. Every moment of it! The throne is red velvet and your scrunchie is red and the wine is red! It’s all red because whether you meant to or not, you fucking killed Heather!”

_ I will scream them out tonight, _

The demon queen of high school has nothing to say. There is nothing she can say that will compare to the poetry that pours from my lips. My red lips. I speak for Heather, the one that can’t talk but had much to say to the one that has nothing to say but talks anyway.

“What’s your damage, Heather?” She snaps, as if that means anything to me.

_ Can you hear my voice this time? _

“You’re my goddamn damage.” I snarl, an ugly undertone arising in my voice. “You’re the damage of Westerburg, you’re the parasite we can’t get rid of.”

_ This is my fight song. _

“If you hate Westerburg so much, go the fuck to Remington!” She fumes, the red she always craved flushing her cheeks. “You’re disposable, Mcnamara. You’re a worm.”

_ Take back my life song. _

“Before I go to Remington, I want my life back.” I demand. “Give me the scrunchie.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Give me the goddamn scrunchie.”

She slaps me.

I stand up, steadily as her hand leaves a red print on my cheek. 

_ Prove I’m alright song. _

I am taller than moments before. Every word encourages me. She is building me.

_ My power’s turned on, _

_ Starting right now, I’ll be strong. _

“You don’t deserve to live.” She swallows. “Go on and bitch and moan, your ass is off the team. Good luck ever finding anyone in your life again that will ever love you. You’re impossible to love.”

_ I’ll play my fight song. _

“I don’t need your approval.” I admit to myself and to Heather. “You need mine though. So I’m leaving you without it.”

_ And I don’t really care if nobody else believes. _

My hand reaches her face. I hold it carefully for a moment while a pin drops in the distance. “Good luck.”

I twist on my heel and march out of the hell hole that I no longer want to rule. Veronica waits outside. “Let’s go buy shoes or something dumb like that.” I suggest as we link arms. Her face is pale and weak. I hear a familiar shout in the distance and I know it’s Jason Dean. They just had a fight, but I’m not going to ask about it.

“Heather, I never want you to die.” She tells me.

I remember how to smile. “I never want to give up.”

_ Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never been loved before. My parents think they love me, but they have to see me to love me- you have to understand and see someone to fully love them and the only reason that hurts is because this is the first time Veronica knows me.

I jingle the feathers and the bell at the top of my favorite pen. It’s only fitting that I write the last thing I will ever write with it. I think about Heather and how she had Veronica to save her from herself. If being saved meant someone thought I was worth saving, I’d want that too. 

_ Losing friends and I’m chasing sleep. _

Veronica cares more about Heather than me. All the Heathers. She hasn’t once asked me how the suicides affected me. And knowing I liked Ram. And then the note. She’s not my friend. I can’t even begin to ever consider her a friend. She’s a Heather now. And not even the yellow one. My parents are the only thing that’s making the pen hard to hold. 

_ Everybody’s worried about me. _

I’m their little girl. They don’t care that I’m not so little. They never did. They’re hippies. They’re blind. They think that Veronica and I are still friends and that I’m wildly popular or something. I love them, but they are just so blind.

_ In too deep. Say I’m in too deep. _

“I’m going on a walk.” I tell my dad as he cooks peppers and onions on the stove. My mom’s still at work. I feel my paper burning in my pocket. I wonder if he can see the flames.

“Be back before dinner!” He says, only seeing the flames on the stove with his blind eyes. “Be safe!”

That’s not the plan.

The Old Mill Bridge is a little bit down the road, right across from the school. I have the privilege of walking in the morning. It’s a good time for me to relax and breathe and just be for a moment. But it’s never enough. Breathing keeps you alive, but it doesn’t keep you wanting to be alive.

Miniature waves crash against the base of the bridge. It’s the most relaxed I’ve felt in weeks. Months, even.

_ And it’s been two years, I miss my home. _

Past the bridge and the river flowing below, there’s a treehouse in the woods. I showed it to Veronica in our sophomore year. She entered with a smile, but I’m not an idiot. She wasn’t stoked. She was fake for the first time. That was the moment she started to become a Heather. It wasn’t when they offered her lipgloss or a place to sit. It was when she looked down at Martha’s Treehouse with a scowl. 

Last week, the treehouse went up in flames.

_ But there’s a fire burning in my bones. _

I know it was the Heathers. Duke lives down the street. She must have seen me go in. Or Veronica told her.

_ Still believe. Yeah, I still believe. _

My biggest regret is my note. It’s full of shit. I’m not killing myself because of a boy. Because Ram might be gay or because Ram is dead. Because Ram is a symbol. He is all of the boys and all of the girls that never liked me. Symbols hurt the most, because you know you’re just overreacting. Nobody gets upset over a symbol. They get upset over the real thing. I’m weak. Oversensitive. Whiny. I’ve heard it all. It’s all true. I don’t believe in unicorns anymore and I don’t believe in love. But maybe a Martha full of hope is a Martha the world could someday find her body and love.

_ And all those things I didn’t say _

I wish my note was authentic. But people don’t like authentic. People like unicorns and girls who can’t grow up. People like fake and cute and that’s why they like the Heathers. If I could actually write an honest note, I’d write just that. My stream of consciousness is the real note. And nobody gets to read it.

_ Wrecking balls inside my brain. _

The waves feel louder as they creep but the side of the bridge. My mind clicks and clacks to a rhythm I wish I knew better. I have words to say and I’m not going to die without saying them.

_ I will scream them loud tonight _

“High school blows!”

  
  
  


_ Can you hear my voice this time? _

“Martha, I’m so sorry.”

I haven’t heard her voice crack like this since the first time we watched The Princess Bride together. 

“I love you.”

It’s kind. It’s apologetic. I have never been loved before. My parents think they love me, but they have to see me to love me- you have to understand and see someone to fully love them and the only reason that hurts is because this is the first time Veronica knows me.

She hasn’t read the note.

She just loves me.

Her words are a song.

_ This is my fight song _

_ Take back my life song. _

I have a life. I don’t believe it’s that good or that it can be, but there’s something to said about being alive. I don’t need to be perfect or good. Okay is good.

_ Prove I’m alright song. _

It’s a melody stringing itself together, adding intricate chords and crescendos to blast the power and the emotion through a bassline.

_ My power’s turned on. _

I am alive. I wasn’t sure for a while, because the bright hospital lights look a lot like heaven. I still wonder what heaven is like. Could I befriend the Heathers there? Or yet, could the Heathers befriend me?

_ Starting right now I’ll be strong. _

I don’t need to worry about the Heathers. They do not make me strong. They made my strong. But I don’t need their pain, their help anymore. I have a new melody. It’s not hopeful. Please, don’t think this is hope. This isn’t hope.

_ I’ll play my fight song _

_ And I don’t really care if nobody else believes _

Because I don’t care. This isn’t hope because it’s too busy being numb. Hope isn’t numb because hope is full of light and a journey to maybe a better place. This can’t be hope.

_ Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left it me _

I’m drained. Maybe the ice in my heart is better than the stone that could be. Stone can only be broken and destroyed but ice can be warmed. Warmed with light. Hope. I don’t have hope, but that’s the key. I hope I pick the lock.

_ A lot of fight left in me. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #protectmartha2k17


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a valiant, forgiving Death reentering my church and my cemetery in the same footstep.

I am numb.

Cotton tightens around my neck as I hear him talk so excitedly about destroying lives and stories and he wants to burn the Library of Alexandria but before it could even grow. That doesn’t make any sense. I wait for him to leave. My mom’s footsteps echo up the stairs.

She lets out an ear piercing scream as I burst back to life. “Mom, I’m alive!” I cry out, trying to comfort her for a few moments before I go to sink. “I’m going out.” I tell her after I clarify my crude ‘joke’.

_ Like a small boat, on the ocean. _

“When will you be back?” She asks, because with a firm belief that I want to end my life, it’s only just that she let me go out into the world. The parents are powerless. I can kill myself in my bedroom or on the Old Mill Bridge or in the cemetery or I can go to the school and let JD do the deed for me.

“That’s a good question.”

The school is just as daunting as it was when I was a freshman, but in a different, darker light. I balance a croquet mallet on one shoulder and hold a handgun in my frail fingers. I am a domino and I cannot fall or my school falls on top of me.

_ Sending big waves into motion. _

“Step away from the bomb.” I demand with thunder and power shaking my vocal chords.

He lets out a cackle that chills my spine, even in the musty underground of the boiler room. “This little thing? Hardly call this a bomb. This is just to trigger the packs of thermals upstairs in the gym.  _ Those _ are bombs. People are gonna see the ashes of Westerburg High School and they’re gonna think, ‘There’s a school that self destructed, not because society didn’t care, but because that school was society’. The only place where Heathers and Marthas can get along is in heaven. You might as well get out some marshmallows. Even if I stepped away, it’d still, well, kaboom!”

_ Like how a single word can make a heart open, _

“Please.”

My mind forms the word before I do, and I watch his face soften. He is not a monster. It would be easier if he was. “I wish your mom was better and your dad was better and we met when life was better. But we didn’t. So please. Come with me.”

“I can’t.”

His hands reach for my gun and I try to hit him with the mallet, but my fingers cock against the trigger to the sounds of a shot and for once, I committed the murder with my bare, pale blue hands.

He falls, tragically, like a God falling on his own people. I take the chance to grab the ticking bomb and run, dash, race to the football field as it counts down to my death.

_ I might only have one match _

_ But I can make an explosion. _

The irony here is that I never wrote my own suicide note.

I’d write it to McNamara, and tell her that she is a princess in her own right and it is up to her to make the world a better place because I did what I could.

I’d write it to Martha, and tell her that I made so many mistakes in my life that I couldn’t even begin to ask for forgiveness. Just hope.

I’d write it to JD, if it makes it, and tell him that I wish he knew what love was and that it didn’t die in Texas.

I have to admit that I was wrong.

The irony here is that JD never wrote his own suicide note.

I am a valiant, forgiving Death reentering my church and my cemetery in the same  footstep. I am charcoal and soot and fire and flame and JD. 

_ This is my fight song. _

The school stops to stare at the silent sheriff. I am a victor from a battle that nobody knew I had to fight. Nobody knew I started. Heather Duke emerges from the pep rally crowd, armed with an insult and a red scrunchie. Soon she will be out both.

“You look like hell.”

“I just got back.” My greasy, dusty fingers pry her scrunchie off her perfect hair as I plop a golden kiss on her cheek. 

_ Take back my life song. _

“Listen up folks, the war is over.” I announce, standing on a chair because I am so sick of having people be stood on. I am not a Heather, no matter if anybody thought I was. I’m a Veronica. “We’re going to be okay from now on.” I promise.

_ Prove I’m alright song _

McNamara warps her dainty arms around me, cutting past Duke. “People were saying you killed yourself.”

“I could never do that.” I say with a gulp in my throat as Martha wheels over to us. 

She avoids my gaze. “It’s a lot easier than you’d think.”

_ My power’s turned on. _

My friends aren’t allowed to suffer like this. Not anymore. “We’re better than this. We’re all frightened and freaks and that’s okay. Can we move on?”

“Can we?”

_ Starting right now I’ll be strong. _

Heather’s bright blue eyes contrast against her canary dress. She’s curious and young. She’s not even seventeen yet, and she already has gone through hell and back. Coming back is the hardest part. “Yes.” I decide. “We need an anthem.”

_ I’ll play my fight song. _

Martha smiles. “I love you.” It doesn’t make sense, for her to tell me this. It’s not an anthem at all. Somehow, it’s melodic. 

_ And I don’t really care if nobody else believes _

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about JD. His remains over the football field, an urban legend to remain. I could tell people the truth. That I was a hero. But that’s not the truth at all. I killed so many. I don’t want them to believe I am a hero.

“What’s next?” Martha asks, a certain depth in her eye that I never quite noticed before. I’ve tried so hard to shelter her. She’s grown up and I never noticed. She’s smart and incredible. I’ve been so blind.

I look forward, out the doors of the school. I can feel JD’s presence, just like Heather and Kurt and Ram. I don’t know if they’ll go away anytime soon. But I can handle it.

_ Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me. _

I hold Heather’s hand as she reaches out to Duke. She is rejected by the forest, who slithers back into the shadows. Someday she will accept us. She is why we do this.

Heather still keeps her hand out. I know that she can’t see her, but the red ghost makes her way next to her friend. She is why we do this.

I rest my palm on Martha’s shoulder. She is so much stronger than I ever gave her credit for and she is a warrior. She is why we do this.

What is next?

“We fight.”

_ I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! I really enjoyed writing this and I hope you enjoyed reading it. If you have any requests, shoot me a message or an ask on Tumblr @mcnamarasmacroni or @goldenheartprincess.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! You can follow my Tumblr @goldenheartprincess. Please leave a comment or something with your thoughts. I also take requests, sometimes. Honestly, this is one of my favorite fics I've done. Here are recs for others of mine, if you liked this one:  
> If you like Heathers, I recommend reading "beauty in the ugly" or "Dear Heather McNamara".  
> If you like songfics, I recommend reading "The Tiger and the Dead Girl".  
> If you like angst with happy endings, I recommend reading "Loving You Isn't The Right Thing to Do"


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